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Manufacturing Engineering Technician students – “Wired to Industry”

At a recent visit to Central Wire Industries in Perth, Ontario students from the Manufacturing Engineering Technician program handed over a number of finished, custom design and manufactured Wire Tensioner devices.

The Wire Tensioner project was part of the Mechanical Design course in the final semester of our Manufacturing Engineering Technician program. It was a two stage process where the graduating level students from our program design the project and our students coming into the fall of the next year manufacture the components and assemble the completed project.
Our second year mechanical design students were set-up with local companies, in this case Central Wire Industries (CWI) in Perth ON, who had a project or idea that they would like to have worked on but did not have the skills, resources or time to pursue. These second year students designed the components and assemblies in 3D solid modeling CADD (Computer Aided Design and Drafting) in the winter of 2014.
Once those students had completed the program in April of 2014, the program faculty and staff then produced a working prototype of the student design and brought it to CWI. CWI then set-up the Wire Tensioner and used it for a period of two weeks. CWI then asked for a few modifications to the design. The modifications were completed in CADD as well as the working prototype.
In the fall of 2014, CWI then provided Manufacturing Engineering Technician program all of the required materials and tooling needed to machine the components for fourteen assembled units. Our Manufacturing Engineering Technician students, under the supervision of our Faculty, provided the skilled labor to produce those assemblies. This was the first project produced by our new program and its success speaks volumes about the students, staff and Central Wire Industries working together.

Read more about this fantastic collaborative project in the following Algonquin Times news story by Sean Minaker here – http://algonquintimes.com/innovations/students-wired-to-industry/ .

Mechanical Engineering Technology students team up with Carleton University students again on crash-test dummy

On April 4th, for the third year in a row, Algonquin College students and Carleton University students teamed up to design and produce a crash test dummy being used in bicycle / automobile collisions.

Students from the Mechanical Technician – Toolmaking program started work on this project two years’ ago when they machined all the parts for the crash test dummy and then enhanced the dummy last year. This year students from the three-year Mechanical Engineering Technology program worked on some additional improvements to the dummy as well as the track on which the bicycle is propelled in the test with Faculty from both the Mechanical Technician-Toolmaking and Mechanical Engineering Technology programs.

“This year’s test went better than anyone involved on the project would have imagined. As late as the day before the official launch on Friday, both the dummy and the track were not cooperating (as is often the case with these types of projects) and there was talk that perhaps the media should be called off but they worked really hard fixing the problems and the crash test went off extremely well. I had two teams of students that were working on the project: the Biomechanics team was involved with making improvements to the dummy and the other, the Simulation/Emulation team, worked on simulating the crash conditions. The Biomechanics team re-designed many of the dummy’s body parts to better simulate the movement of an actual person’s joints which resulted in more accurate test data from the sensor’s implanted in those areas of the dummy. The Simulation/Emulation team helped design the track that drove the bicycle toward the crash and ultimately launched the dummy. They were solely responsible for designing the braking system on the track.” Stated Mechanical Engineering Technology professor Sandra Brancatelli.

 

The Members of the two Algonquin College teams are:

Biomechanics: Jason Pell, Micheal Hii and Andrei Potapov

Simulation/Emulation: Kitiphong Norasith, Scott Hall, Neil Fevrier and Ali Khalladi

Sandra went on to say, “I am very proud of what both of these teams have achieved. We joined Carleton University on this project in September well after it had begun and yet not only did these students quickly become fully contributing members of the team, in many cases they took on leadership roles. This has been an excellent learning experience for our students and we are looking forward to continuing this collaboration with Carleton University next year.”

Read more and view video of the test in an article published in the Ottawa Sun here.

Mechanical Technician – Toolmaking students help All Saints Catholic High School Robotics Team

Over the past few months students and Faculty from the final year of the Mechanical Technician – Toolmaking program have been busy helping students from the All Saints High School Astechz robotics team manufacture parts for their entry into the First Robotics Competition. The All Saints’ team – Astechz – Team 2994 will be competing at the First Robotics Competition being held from April 24th through April 26th in St. Louis.

Parts for ASTECHZ robot

The parts manufactured by the students took approximately six hours of programming time and a further six hours of CNC machining to complete. Over the last few years the Faculty of Technology and Trades has both sponsored and provided technical help for the All Saints Team and in the spirit of the First Robotics Competition for the last year we have also been building our relationships with other local high schools looking to also compete in this prestigious annual competition.

For more information on the Astechz please visit their website. For more information on the First Robotics Competition please view the following page.

Machined parts for All Saints Robot Third view of machined parts for All Saints CHS robot Another view of machined parts for All Saints CHS Robot